


The Fourth Statue

by Quicksilver_ink



Category: Wild ARMs
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Yuletide 2014, dungeon diving, maddening puzzles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilver_ink/pseuds/Quicksilver_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecilia, Jack, Hanpan, and Rudy seek out the mysterious Guardian Lords and face one of their most challenging -- and frustrating -- trials yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fourth Statue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Harken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Harken/gifts).



Cecilia frowned at the stone tablet set into the wall of the abandoned sanctuary.  Without a mirror, she couldn’t see the little vertical line between her eyebrows, the one her friend Lila in Curan Abbey swore always turned up after exactly one hour of serious studying. Lila’d always immediately insisted they take a break at that point, or they would both develop early wrinkles.

The days of studying with friends in the warm, cozy rooms of Curan Abbey seemed a lifetime ago. Even at the dead of night, even in the strange secret library she’d uncovered on her seventeenth birthday, there had been a sort of welcoming sense of life to the place. This abandoned temple seemed almost opposite. Not precisely unwelcoming, just empty and cold. And Cecilia had been studying this tablet for a lot less than an hour, but she wasn’t sure extra time would help.  It remained as strange to her as it had on her first attempt.

The lightest fluttering along her back, from ankle to shoulder, signaled the arrival of Hanpan. The windmouse settled on her shoulder and peered at the stone tablet.

“Jack wants to know what the holdup is,” Hanpan told her. It was still odd to her to hear him speak from her own shoulder, instead of Jack’s. His voice that seemed too deep to come from something so slight. “He says he’s bored keeping watch for monsters. Just between you and me, though, I think he could stand to wait a while.”

Cecilia smiled sheepishly. “He’s going to have to. I’m having trouble translating this one.” She stretched out her hand and touched the stone tablet lightly. The letters, carved into a smooth block of stone set in the wall, were as clear as the day the stonemason had carved them, or so it seemed to Cecilia as she traced the grooves in the stone with her index finger.

Hanpan ran out along her arm, his bright black eyes darting here and there. “I thought you could read the old Sieljen glyphs,” he said.

“I can, normally. But these are strange.” She brought her hand back to her shoulder, and Hanpan obligingly resumed his perch there as she kept talking. “I mean, I know it’s about the Guardian Lords, that much is clear, but all the verb endings are unfamiliar. I’m just guessing on the tenses. I think long ago this was a sacred place for them.”

“Well, that’s what the Baskar Chief told us,” the windmouse said.  

“Yes. He said it was where the Guardians of Love, Courage, and Hope resided. But there’s this character that always comes after.” Cecilia tapped it with her index finger. “I don’t know what it means.”

“Me neither,” Hanpan admitted, after giving it a long look. “Think it’s important?”

Cecilia bit her lip. “Well, if it’s about the Guardian Lords, I think that’s important.”

“Read it aloud, maybe? The bits you can do, I mean.”

“The Guardian Lords… since long ago this place was the sacred land for the masters of the Guardians.” Cecilia winced at the awkwardness of her translation -- the parts of speech came in different orders in ancient Sieljen. “The Guardian Lords were the Guardians of Hope, Courage, Love. Then the weird symbol.  The all-place-seeing -- sorry, omniscient -- power of the Guardian Lords sustains and shelters Filgaia.”

“Shelters?” Hanpan’s nose twitched. “Sure it’s not shields? I see the symbol for evil.”

“Well, it could be shields,” Cecilia allowed. “But that has its own word. This is more ‘roof against evil’, if I just read the characters on their own.”

“Hmm.” The windmouse flitted across to her other shoulder. “Makes me think of the dimensional barriers at Court Seim and Saint Centaur.”

Cecilia tensed at the memory. Neither town’s barrier had kept everyone safe. If the Guardian Lords were so powerful…. what had happened to them? “The omniscient power of the Guardian Lords is greatly missed in Filgaia,” she said aloud, but softly.

His touch light as puff of breeze, Hanpan nuzzled her hair.  “That it is,” he said, just as quietly as she had spoken. Then he nipped her ear. She squeaked and clapped a hand to it, and glared as he moved to her raised elbow.

“Don’t get all mopey over some old writing with strange verb endings,”  He groomed his whiskers thoughtfully. “And the symbol you don’t know, the one after it names the Guardian Lords? Probably an honorific of some kind. I wouldn’t worry about it unless we see it again.”

 

* * *

Cecilia reported her findings to Rudy and Jack, who took it with a nod and shrug respectively, and they made their way along the winding paths of walkways and bridges over the wide, still pools of water that filled most of the sanctuary.

The abandoned temple was chilly, the steep stone walls that climbed into darkness high above their heads seeming to drink in all the heat. Small wonder the monsters that made their lairs there were mostly the heavily furred, sphinxlike Kelbim. Their pelts were lovely, thick snow-white and ash-grey fur, and probably would have sold for quite a bit in a nearby town. But the Kelbim had human faces -- achingly beautiful and as unmoving as a burial mask -- so by unspoken agreement they all left the monster’s bodies where they fell. The air was clear but felt hazy, somehow, reflecting in sensation the murky appearance of the water. 

“And it’s damn cold!” Jack yelped, falling back as he jerked his hand out of the pool.

“I said it was a bad idea,” Hanpan told him from the safety of Rudy’s shoulder. “If you keep doing idiot things like that I’m going to ride with one of the others. It could have been a trap. What if turned you to stone, or into a monster?”

“I wasn’t going to drink it,” Jack protested. “I’m not stupid. I just -- Oh, hey, look, another tablet. Princess! Your turn!”

“He thinks he’s subtle when he does that,” Hanpan stage-whispered to the boy. Rudy chuckled softly.

Cecilia shook her head, half-amused, half-annoyed, but stepped forward. This was part of her role in their little team, after all, and usually she enjoyed it.

Thankfully, the inscription on this tablet was fairly short, and every symbol was familiar even if the verbs remained strange. She took a moment to assemble the words in a sensible order in her mind before speaking. “The red glow is a symbol of the Guardian of Love. The hot emotion to care for another.”

Jack snickered.

Cecilia felt her face flush. “What? That’s what it says!”

“It sounds poetic, even if it’s a little strange,” Rudy said reflectively. “Is there more?”

Cecilia nodded, and turned her attention back to the task. It wasn’t any more difficult than the first, but after Jack’s reaction she wasn’t going to spout off a perfectly literal translation. It didn’t help that it hadn’t seemed silly in her head, only when she said it aloud in her own language.

After a quick mental rehearsal, she cleared her throat. “The blue glow is a symbol of the Guardian of Courage. The power-”

“Power?” Jack, who had been picking his nails while she worked, looked up with sudden interest.

Hanpan groaned. “Now you’ve done it.”

Cecilia cleared her throat. “The power to heighten one’s self.”

“Oh. That.” Jack waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, yeah, mental discipline is important for swordsmanship, but there’s such a thing as taking budo too seriously. I was hoping to hear something new.”

Cecilia ignored him, working out the third line. “This is the sacred place where the three powers that hold the world together are worshiped. The three powers will never crumble. The shattered will is the weakness of humans.”

As one, they turned to look at Jack.

He held his hands up in surrender “All right, all right, point taken! Don’t question the wisdom of the ancients.”

Cecilia was looking at the tablet again, running her hands over the grooves of letter cut in stone. She froze, blinking, and peered at the apparently-blank stone beneath her fingertips. Swallowing suddenly, she turned her back to tablet and leaned against it, folding her arms. Trying to look at ease, she smiled. “Well, there you have it. Jack? Rudy?”

“I’m satisfied,” Rudy said, hoisting his pack. “Shall we move on?”

“The sooner the better,” Jack agreed.

Cecilia waited a moment longer before following them.

Jack had, jokingly, taken the line about the weakness of humans as a rebuke against him, but she rather suspected it was against her.

Because there had been a fourth line, faint and barely readable, one she hadn't even seen it until her fingers had felt the edges. And once she had, she hadn't dared speak it aloud to her friends. The same, unfamiliar character. _Will forge its own path._   Had it been added later, or had someone tried to erase it? And maybe it was just a coincidence that the way to write “forge a path” involved one of the same characters as the word “to break”. But it struck her as sinister, either way.

 

* * *

Rudy wondered a little about Cecilia’s quiet as they continued to make their winding way through the first few chambers, along narrow turning walkways. He was used to the way she and Jack chattered, with Hanpan’s occasional interjections; he liked to let their comfortable conversation wash over him, even if he didn’t have much to add himself. But she’d fallen quiet, so it was just the swordsman and the windmouse, and soon even their friendly bickering trailed off. 

Maybe it was just the emptiness of the place. _More like a tomb than a temple_ , Jack had commented while they had first entered, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dim light. Rudy thought he agreed.

“If this was meant to be a maze, it’s not much of one,” Cecilia remarked after they passed up another obvious dead-end. It was the first time she’d spoken since she’d translated the tablet, Rudy realized.

“I think it’s a labyrinth,” Hanpan replied, his fur tickling Rudy’s ear. True to his earlier threat, he had switched to the boy’s shoulder after Jack had nearly fallen into the water during a fight with one of the Kelbim.

“Aren’t those the same thing?” Rudy asked, craning his neck awkwardly to face his passenger. 

It was Jack who answered. “Labyrinths tend to have a single path, rather than branching like a maze. They’re not meant to keep people out. People walk them for meditation, or prayer. What?” he asked, when Cecilia and Rudy stared at him. “Look, a Dream Chaser needs to know his ancient ruins, all right? I’m not some religious dupe!”

Rudy thought about this. “So the tablets are here to give worshippers something to meditate about.” 

“That sounds about right,” Cecilia agreed. “Oh, look, here’s another. Let Courage reside in your right hand, Love reside in your left hand, and Hope reside within.”

“Damn fool place to keep love,” Jack said. “Unless they mean- “ he glanced at the princess and cut himself short. “Yeah, sounds religious to me.”

“What did he mean by that?” Rudy asked Hapan as they walked on.

The windmouse’s hesitation was enough of an answer. “Never mind,” the boy said, feeling his ears heat up. 

The wide open rooms of brick walkways over still water soon gave way to a claustrophobic maze of twisty little passages, all different. Half the passages were blocked by rubble, piled too high and precariously to risk climbing over. Large statues of strange beings midway between human and animal blocked their progress through other paths, standing two or three abreast. There were gaps, between, but only Hanpan could squeeze past the half-furled wings, outstretched arms and coiling tails.

“Is this enough of a maze for you, Princess?” Jack asked after they’d reached a dead-end created by the statue of a man with a dragon’s head. “I can’t decide is whether the statues are of people wearing masks, or they’re monsters.”

The idea that it could only be one or the other made Rudy uneasy. “Maybe they’re just a different kind of person?” he offered, quietly. 

Jack snorted. “They don’t even have human faces. Even the Kelbim did, and they were definitely monsters.”

“I still say they’re called Cheribum, Jack,” Hanpan corrected impatiently. “And I haven’t got a human face, if it comes to that. You suggesting I’m a monster? The barrier in Saint Centaur certainly thought so.”

Jack looked startled, then chagrined. “You’re my _partner._ Of course you’re a person. But they’re called Kelbim.”

Hanpan sniffed. “Just for that, I’m staying with Rudy.”

Hanpan had gotten over his sulk and was riding in his proper place on Jack’s shoulder once again. Of course, that didn’t stop him from mouthing off as they reached the end of the maze, one last passageway leading to a larger, lit room.

“And I told you to shut up and leave the thinking-” the windmouse was saying, but Jack’s attention was immediately drawn by the movement in the corner of his eye. Cecilia had stumbled as she crossed the threshold into the larger room.

“You okay, Princess?” Jack asked, catching her elbow.

“I’m fine.” She straightened, but surprisingly didn’t bother to pull out of his grip. “More than fine. Can you feel it? This place is… “ she groped for a word. “Odd. Warm.”

Jack let her go and stepped back, folding his arms to hide his unease. It was spooky when the princess got all mystical like this, even if she wasn’t in a full Guardian-communing trance. “Well, it’s not cold by my standards, but I wouldn’t call it _warm_. The air’s still pretty dank. Probably from all the water in the main hall.”

“I know what she means, though,” Rudy said slowly. “It’s...different, here. Not exactly peaceful, but...” he glanced at Cecilia.

“Watched.”

Jack felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Watched. By _what_.”

“By whoever put the statues here, I think.” Hanpan scuttled down Jack’s side, making the brown overcoat sway with his passage. A second later he had perched atop the nearest, a sphere of brilliant blue resting on a wide square plinth. After the uncanny beings in the maze, it was almost disappointingly plain. There were three others, the same shape but different colors, and each a shade far brighter than Jack had ever seen from patina over a cast bronze statue -- and he’d seen a lot of old bronze statues in ruins. He wondered absently how the makers had achieved it. Surely paint would’ve peeled by now? It had on all the other statues he’d seen in ruins...

“There’re also marked spots on the floor,” Rudy said, pacing. “They’re set down a little in the floor.” He stepped on one, but nothing happened. “If it’s a switch, it’s not just weight.”

“Four statues. But only three spaces. And the way forward’s locked.” Jack groaned, rubbing his forehead. Great. _Another_ test. “Why do the Guardians keep putting these stupid things in their temples?”

“To keep people out,” Hanpan said pointedly. He relocated himself to the green statue in a blue blurr. “Fools, looters, the unworthy…”

“Yeah, well, I’m none of those things, so why can’t they just let me through?” Jack retorted, although he had only half his mind on the argument. 

 

* * *

 

 Four statues. Cecilia bit her lip. The tablets in the main hall, and that untranslatable symbol -- was it a fourth Guardian lord, one that made its own path? Was that why there were four statues?

_Let courage reside in your right hand_ , she mused, looking at the gleaming blue statue. _Love in your left..._

“And hope within?”

She turned away from the red statue to face Rudy, her own face turning a shade closer to the statue’s. “I didn’t mean to say that aloud.”

Rudy smiled quizzically, like he didn’t understand why she was embarrassed. “But I was thinking the same thing. That’s the solution, isn’t it?”

“But the tablets never said what color hope was,” she pointed out. “Green, or yellow, or…”

“We’ll try it both ways?”

The statues were heavy. Rudy, almost unbelievably strong, didn’t seem to mind, but Cecilia hated leaving all the heavy lifting to him. She called Jack over and, working as one, the three maneuvered the blue statue to the rightmost marked space. The square base fit perfectly, and settled into the shallow depression with a satisfying shuddering sound

“That wasn’t so bad,” Jack commented. “What’s next, red in the left? Not much of a puzzle if you ask me.”

 

* * *

Two hours later and an awful lot of statue-shoving later, Jack sat on the base of the blue globe and tried to look like he was adjusting his sleeves instead of rubbing sore muscles. Hanpan had made them try each possible combination of statues on the three spots on the floor. Using the Princess’s magic Pocketwatch to return the room to its original configuration saved them some time and energy, but with twenty-four combinations, it had still been a lot of work.

Jack wasn’t going to admit _he_ was tired, like he was some kind of old man. But Cecilia had gone pale and quiet like she did when she was overtaxed, and you had to keep an eye on Rudy or the kid would just work until suddenly he was keeling over. A quick, shared glance with Hanpan, and the windmouse was insulting Jack’s intelligence, and Jack his mother. Cecilia and Rudy had gone almost immediately to sit against the wall. Good; the kids needed the rest.

He watched them, still absently bickering with Hanpan, as they shared jerky and dried fruit from Rudy’s packs, and passed Cecilia’s waterskin back and forth. She’d come a long way, the princess -- even if she’d been determined, she’d still been sheltered, and the first time Rudy offered her a drink from his waterskin she’d been disgusted by the thought of drinking where another’s mouth had been.  But now she didn’t even seem to notice.

Jack took a long drink from his own waterskin -- still plenty full -- and offered some to Hanpan.

“The air in here’s humid enough that I don’t need it,” the windmouse replied. He added, more quietly, “Any ideas on how we’re going to get through here? I don’t mind admitting that I’m stumped.”

“We could always bomb the door,” Jack said. “Like I was saying an hour ago.”

“You know that won’t work. The Guardians build better temples than that.”

“Probably not, but it will make me feel better, all right?”

Hanpan shook his head, but didn’t argue further, so Jack turned and called across the room. “Hey, Rudy. Give me a couple of your bombs, will you? I’m going to try blasting the door.”

Rudy frowned at him. “That sounds like a very bad idea.”

“You got any others?” Jack crossed his arms. “Hanpan’s been over every inch of these things, looking for secret switches, and your radar’s turning up nothing.”

“Maybe the Teardrop?”

“That’s how we got into this room in the first place. It’s not much of a test for the worthy to use it twice,” Hanpan said. “But… hmm, let’s put the red and blue back in the configuration from the inscription. We’ll have Cecilia stand in the middle with the Teardrop. If anything’s the hope of the world, it’s got to be either the one who can hear Guardians or the Teardrop itself.”

It didn’t work. Neither did having the Princess has pour her ever-flowing waterbucket on either the statues or into the floor depressions, or bonking them with that animal-talking wand of hers. Jack had surreptitiously sparked his lighter on the red statue while Rudy tried skating over the tiles in different orders, but the strange patina was not in the least flammable.

“Those skates of his weren’t invented until centuries after this place was built, why would that have even worked?” Hanpan grumbled.

Cecilia glared at him. “I thought it was worth a try!”

“I still think Hope is one of the statues. Let’s try the gold one again,” Rudy suggested.

They did.

“Oh, look. Nothing happened. Again.” Yeah, Jack knew was being too hard on the kid, but this stupid test-of-the-Guardians was getting _annoying_. “Look, just bomb the door, all right?” He tossed Rudy his lighter.

Rudy fished out a small bomb from his pack, then hesitated, the explosive ball in one hand and the lighter in the other. Cecilia was glaring at him.

“Absolutely not! It’s disrespectful to the Guardians. And what if you damage something?” She stepped between Jack and the boy.”  

“She can just fix it with that magic watch of hers. C’mon, Rudy.” Jack tried to push past the princess, but gently.

She shoved back at him. “These are the Guardian Lords! We can’t be so frivolous!”

“Seems to me we already have been.” He hated to do this, she was a mage and still a kid besides, so it wasn’t exactly fair, but… he muscled past her easily and rushed towards Rudy. He grappled with the boy briefly, trying to wrestle the small bomb out of Rudy’s grasp.

“Jack, you--”  Cecilia began kicking him in the shins. “Stop it! Leave him alone!”

Jack had learned early on not to bother armwrestling with Rudy -- the boy won handily every time. But the addition of Cecilia into the fray confused things, and when one misaimed kick caught Rudy in the legs, the loose bomb went flying.

“Fire in the hole!” Hanpan shouted in warning, his voice like the roar of a gale.

Jack threw himself to the ground, toppling the other two and pinning them beneath him. A half-breath later the room shook as the bomb detonated.

The three picked themselves up, slowly, shakily. Jack offered a hand to Rudy in silent apology; the boy took it and let Jack pull him up.

“I can’t believe we were such…” Cecilia’s hands trembled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, both of you. Is everyone all right?”

“I am, but that statue’s not.” Rudy pointed, and Jack saw the pile of green rubble. “I guess the bomb went off when it struck it. Surprised it shattered so thoroughly.”

Jack was surprised too -- he’d thought the statues were cast bronze, not ceramic or stone. He looked up, and then froze.

“We were all idiots.” Cecilia sounded close to tears. “Especially me. If I hadn’t-- now everything’s ruined, and it’s all because I...”

“Just use the Pocketwatch,” Rudy said gently. “That’ll put the room to rights.”

That stirred Jack from his shock. “No, don’t!” He practically bellowed it.

Rudy clapped a hand to one ear and winced. “Why not?”

“Because the door’s _open_.”

The others turned and looked.

“Huh. Would you look at that,” Hanpan said. He scurried up and down each of them, a reassuring touch of breeze, before stopping on Jack. “The question is, why did it work?”

“Hold courage in your right hand,” Rudy recited. “Hold love in your left, and hope within… if this was a test, we failed on all three counts. And broke the green statue besides.”

“Oh,” Cecilia breathed, raising a hand to her mouth. “We got it backwards. This wasn’t a test. This was a lesson.”

Jack looked at Rudy, who shrugged -- he didn’t get it either. “Well, I’m sure we’ve all learned something important about responsible handling of explosives, but I don’t see why the Guardian Lords would care about that.”

“It does seem a bit too mundane,” Hanpan agreed.

“Remember the earlier tablets? The three powers -- Hope, Love, and Courage -- will never crumble.” She gestured at the remaining statues. “But the shattered will is-”

“The weakness of humans,” Rudy finished with her. They grinned at one another, Cecilia with a little shy duck of her head, Rudy rubbing the back of his neck.

Jack found the corners of his mouth quirking up of their own accord -- it was good the kids were back in good spirits. He gave them a moment more, then coughed. “Well, I’m glad the Guardians are invested in our education. But I think next time I’d rather just get a lecture.”


End file.
